Mai Khoi delivering food boxes for Westbeth ERC. photo: Christina Maile

Wall Street Journal
New York City’s Neighbors Lend Helping Hands During Pandemic
By Charles Passy
May 30, 2020 9:00 am ET

Buddy programs in apartment complexes ensure no resident is forgotten amid coronavirus

When the pandemic hit New York City, David Sussman worried how he would get by day-to-day with a host of tasks.

Mr. Sussman, 56 years old, suffers from a lung disease and couldn’t risk leaving his apartment in the Stuyvesant Town-Peter Cooper Village complex on Manhattan’s East Side. He knew he could rely on his circle of friends for only so much assistance.

But as it turned out, Mr. Sussman didn’t have to contact them all that much. Through a program offered by the complex’s management, Mr. Sussman was connected to a fellow resident, Matt Peterson, 31, who has helped him with everything from taking down his trash to picking up mail.

“A lot of anxiety was lifted off me,” said Mr. Sussman.

So much for the reputation of New Yorkers being brusque and uncaring. During the pandemic, they have stepped up to help neighbors in myriad ways, often through buddy programs or similar initiatives.

In the case of Stuyvesant Town-Peter Cooper Village, a decades-old complex of 11,200 apartments that is now owned by investment firm Blackstone Group Inc. and real-estate company Ivanhoé Cambridge, there has been a surplus of volunteers for its pandemic program. About 1,400 signed up, which turned out to be far more than needed, according to Rick Hayduk, the complex’s chief executive and general manager.

The volunteers aren’t only directly connecting with neighbors and helping with tasks that also include grocery shopping. They are also organizing a food-pantry program and distributing boxes of goods to those within the complex and throughout the city.

At Westbeth Artists Housing, an affordable-housing complex with nearly 400 units in Manhattan’s West Village, a neighbors-helping-neighbors program was created at the onset of the pandemic in 36 hours.

Westbeth board member George Cominskie spearheaded the effort and has since helped run it with almost a militarylike efficiency, assigning “captains” to every floor in the complex so that no tenant is overlooked. He said the roughly 35 volunteers have handled duties for their fellow residents ranging from changing a bathroom light to accompanying them to a medical appointment.

Even Westbeth residents who are mobile and able to easily get out of the house appreciate the extra support. Kathryn Kates, a busy veteran actress who lives in the complex, said she was thrilled when the volunteer team was able to get her a face mask and goggles when she needed them.

“It feels like we have a family here,” she said.

At other buildings, the help that is offered among neighbors extends to those who have vacated the city. At the Parkline, a rental property with 254 units in Brooklyn’s Prospect Lefferts Gardens, some residents are volunteering to pet sit or water plants, according to Alison Novak, a principal with Hudson Cos., the real-estate firm that owns the building.

Ms. Novak said that encouraging such involvement also helps her company’s bottom line, noting that if residents feel they have all the support they need, they are more likely to stay in the building.

“They’re part of a community,” she said.

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Greenwich Villager Society For Historic Preservation
2020 Village Award
Regina Kellerman Award

Each year, Village Preservation honors neighborhood institutions at the Annual Meeting and Village Awards. This fun event highlights and celebrates the invaluable people, place, and organizations who make our neighborhoods some of the most interesting and exceptional in the city.

George served on the Westbeth Artists Residents Council for twenty-one years, seventeen of them as its president. An active volunteer and fundraiser for God’s Love We Deliver, AIDS Ride, and the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation, George also helped lead Westbeth and its residents through the incredibly difficult recovery from Sandy, when the lower floors of the complex containing residents’ artworks were flooded and many apartments evacuated for long periods of time. George is currently running the Emergency Response Committee at Westbeth to help residents of the affordable housing artists complex, many of whom are elderly, cope with the COVID-19 pandemic.

GVSHP is hosting a virtual celebration for George and the other notable 2020 Village awardees on June 17, 2020

To Register for the Virtual event which will take place on zoom, click here

Local Hero
When times are tough, heroes emerge. We all know someone who’s making a difference right now as we live through unprecedented times. Here at Patch, we’ve launched an initiative to help recognize these everyday heroes.

This submission highlights George Cominskie, a community organizer at the Westbeth Artists Housing complex who stepped up for more than 380 of his neighbors during the coronavirus crisis.
George organized the Westbeth (Artist Housing) Emergency Response Committee and under his leadership organized the distribution of free masks, free safety goggles, food deliveries to 384 apartments, many of which are occupied by seniors or physically challenged. He is in constant communication with elected officials and donors, provides counsel, and compassion. When one tenant passed away (not from coronavirus), he was the one the family depended upon to take care of things. He has galvanized volunteer efforts from all the residents and has worked tirelessly with management to provide a safe, healthy and positive environment for all residents and essential personnel. In the opinion of many, his efforts has saved lives.

Read more HERE

George Cominskie Brief Bio

George Cominskie was President of the Westbeth Artists Residents Council for many years and is now currently a member of the Westbeth Board of Directors. He and his husband , John Turner, photographer and graphic designer, have lived at Westbeth for 25 years. For the past 21 years he has volunteered at Gods Love We Deliver.

David Seccombe shows paintings inspired by elevations for his Wall-to-Wall pieces, such as those created here in 2014-16. Nine large colorful paintings and a small kinetic sculpture fill the Project Room, open around the clock daily through March 31, 2020.

Artist Bio
Prior to living at Westbeth, David Seccombe had a loft in the Village with an attic studio. His sculptures were put together and lowered out a window to the street. He showed at the Brata Gallery, a co-op on 3rd Ave. Later his work was exhibited in Bridgehampton, L.I., Battery Park, Penns Landing, PA, the Detroit Institute of Art, O.K. Harris gallery and others. He is a recipient of support from Pollock-Krasner Foundation, New York Foundation for the Arts and the Adolph and Esther Gottlieb award.

Karen Santry in her Westbeth studio. Photo: Stephen Yang

Manhattan’s one-of-a-kind artists’ sanctuary thrives on low rents and lofty ideals
By Zoe Rosenberg May 14, 2020 |New York Post

“In a city as squeezed for affordable living space as New York, Westbeth Artists Housing is practically utopic.

The rent-stabilized complex in the West Village, a Bell Laboratories facility turned into hundreds of apartments, celebrates its 50th birthday this month.

Many of the community’s original tenants remain, and with rents for a live-work studio in the building maxing at about $1,200 per month — $1,900 less than the median rent for a studio in the neighborhood, according to StreetEasy — who could blame them?

But residents of Westbeth have found more than cut-rate rents among the 383 lofts designed by a young Richard Meier. Their Hudson River-facing community is a stronghold of creative output and unyielding spirit in a neighborhood that’s now at odds, at least financially, with the reality of being a working artist in New York.”

Read entire article HERE

The article features photos (including some of apartments) and interviews with artists Karen Santry, Pele Bauch, Roger Braimon, and Jack Dowling, and Ellen Salpeter, with mentions and links to Louna Vargas-Decker live streamed concerts and Gayle Kirschenbaum’s photo exhibition.

Martha Graham in “Cave of the Heart,” around 1946. Cris Alexander, via Martha Graham Resources, a division of the Martha Graham Center of Contemporary Dance, Inc

“Graham (1894-1991) was complicated; like many artists, she didn’t want to look toward the past. “The only thing we have is the now,” she wrote in “Blood Memory,” her autobiography. She added: “Looking at the past is like lolling in a rocking chair. It is so relaxing and you can rock back and forth on the porch, and never go forward. It is not for me.”
But was it true? Janet Eilber, the company’s artistic director and a former dancer, said Graham was involved with documentation of her work on film in the 1950s and also reconstructed her dances and directed company members in the classic roles. “So she was very much involved in perpetuating her own legacy,” Ms. Eilber said. “But the other stance is so much more theatrical and provocative.”
And no matter what Graham said, she did pay attention to her past. The archive, which consists mainly of paper-based material, photographs and films — the company’s sets and costumes, most of which are stored in a warehouse in Yonkers, are still in use — includes rare footage of Graham dancing at the height of her power in works like “Appalachian Spring” and “Hérodiade” (1944); her script for “Night Journey” (1947), written to its composer, William Schuman; her handwritten notes for “American Document” (1938); and Isamu Noguchi’s set drawing with his notes for “Seraphic Dialogue” (1955).”

-Gia Kourlas for the New York Times May 11, 2020

Read the entire article HERE</a>

Valerie took the photo from the Westbeth roof on April 13, 2020 at 7:02pm. It was featured in TimeOut‘s “10 Great Photos of that rainbow over NYC”

Valerie adds:
After seeing my rainbow photo a few weeks ago an artist in the UK named Paul Stafford, a member of the Royal Society of Sculptors, contacted me to ask if I would donate my photo to an art auction, Artists for the NHS, to help support UK healthcare workers. Of course I said yes!